KingSumo vs. Submittable

When I first started my business, I wanted to ensure that a lot of people understood who we were and why we were there. With KingSumo, it helped my business turn leads into loyal followers of our brand. I think in the world we live in, you have a short amount of time to try to win over the eyes of your prospective client, and the tools given to me by this software helped me immensely. Conversely, I think I should say while it was easy for us to learn this software and how to feel good about implementing it in our day to day lives, I think that some newer users to software such as this may be fearful of learning a software without a proper video tutorial.

Incentivized

Submittable is a great platform for collecting entries for review in various settings. Whether it’s grants, awards, contests, or such events, It offers security, vetting of people to a high degree, and a non-destructive history, which can be essential if you are audited. The platform is easy to set up and can be used in simple or complex ways for judging and reviews. I am unsure in what cases the platform would be unsuitable; it just works.

Incentivized

• Automate Reminders
• Automate Giveaways
• No crazy long-winded tutorials needed
• Low cost

Incentivized

• Great customer service.
• Reviewers are able to see all documents on one screen instead of opening multiple windows in order to review the application.
• Applications are easy to build and edit.
• The review portions is user friendly.
• Applicants find the forms easy to use.

Incentivized

• Limited features on lesser plans
• The "no video tutorial" can be hard for some users
• Occasional glitchyness, but nothing not dealt with on other software

Incentivized

• It really is just a submission aggregator and does not make the grants/project management very efficient for program managers.
• Our organization uses our grant application process to deepen our local nonprofit relationships and needs to be able to view & manage nonprofit profiles, not just submissions.
• Need more options for DocuSign fields beside the placeholder tags that are currently available, such as custom fields we've created within a specific form.
• Need functionality for nonprofits that use fiscal agents -- this is why we cannot use the charity check feature to organize our submissions by organization name.
• Pulling reports for reviewer scores is not feasible with the current setup -- we have an agreement with Submittable to pull our scores in a specific format that we are unable to do within the system ourselves. This eliminates some level of efficiency we thought we would have.
• Pulling immediate information from reports is not feasible -- there's a delay of approximately two days for submission information to populate into the advanced report. This creates some manual work for me to be able to process same-day payments for the emergency assistance program.

Incentivized

We use this software annually to help with our grant processes. Without it, I'd be so lost! Our team relies on the data from our past years to sift applications and we try to prioritize those who have applied and been a finalist but perhaps didn't win in years prior

Incentivized

Submittable is very user friendly. Even our less tech-savvy team members were able to navigate Submittable and achieve what was necessary. The single limitation is that it is not easy to move information/documents/applications from the Submittable platform into other platforms, or even to download documents from Submittable into a separate storage system

Incentivized

We have thankfully never experienced an outage nor been affected by a technology issue on Submittable's side that has delayed our grant process. We have instead been able to distribute over $6M in donated dollars to AAPI small business owners because Submittable is trustworthy and available

Incentivized

We've had a quick and efficient submittable experience that has always been easy to use. When we need a report it downloads within seconds, even the larger reports are 30 seconds or less to download. Pages are quick to load and reports complete in a more than reasonable time frame

Incentivized

I think that they are good at answering our questions and solving our problems. We occasionally get reports from applicants about problems the Submittable team has not solved, but I do not know what the applicant has done to get the problem solved.

Incentivized

We have been using this for many years but my memory is that we had a
human walk us through how to use basic features. We also used the
resource library to learn about specific topics or issues as they came
up.

Incentivized

10/10 because we were able to meet virtually and still get all of our questions answered! Online was effective too because we could easily record the sessions and review them later. Since we had to onboard our reviewers virtually, it was actually convenient that this was the same method we learned how to use the entire program virtually too.

Incentivized

I would say, provide Submittable as much detailed information on your planned use of the platform and your desires with the platform as possible, and the implementation will be tailored to accommodate your organization with minimal lag time and issues/problems.

Incentivized

I think it is apples and oranges. Kingsumo has a purpose and sets out on an easy path to get you to where you need to be. Other test management software, in my opinion, have gimmicks to them, and what I am looking for in the small business world I am in is simplicity and ease. KingSumo does just that!

Incentivized

Submittable isn't in the same league as these other platforms. It's trying to get there but it's been a rocky road. Neither customer support nor the account people we've dealt with at Submittable seem particularly knowledgeable about how the product actually works for foundations and can't provide detailed recommendations for how to use the product more effectively. The decision to use Submittable was made before I came on board. We are moving to another platform next year, probably SmartSimple.

Incentivized

As I said earlier, it is frustrating when new features are introduced and we hear about them on the quarterly check-ins, only to find they come at an additional cost. I think new featured should be grandfathered into existing contracts and then renegotiated.

Incentivized

We were happy to use this for many projects, but sometimes it can be hard to filter for a specific applicant and see how many of our projects and grants they have applied to without filtering by project. We're also hoping to have the feature added where reviewers can only see one project at a time if they don't have clearance to view all of the projects

Incentivized

Very professional

Incentivized

• More efficient with processes because of it
• Very cost-effective even for the smallest of businesses
• Return on Investment was great so far
• My whole team became adept at using it quickly

Incentivized

• Ease of training new employees with the system, simple interface and similar to other CRMs, etc.
• We can launch a new grant fairly quickly now that we have the processes down and templates created
• Ability to respond quickly to provider questions/needs

Incentivized